From Chile to Sweden

My wife recently returned home after five weeks in Chile, the land where she was born. One of the gifts she brought me was a book titled Elvis Presley - Biografia Y Canciones.

In it, there's a short history, biography and discography, together with lyrics to 60 Elvis songs. 12 of the songs also come with guitar chords.

The first thing that struck me was the unusual choice of material. It's not every day you see hits like "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Suspicious Minds" together with "City By Night" and "Am I Ready."

Also selections like "Oh How I Like Jesus" and "Everybody Come Aboard" made me wonder if the book was put together by a fan or by somebody who just picked the songs at random.

Then when I looked closer at some of the songs I realized there were a couple of spelling errors sounding rather funny, such as "My Body Left Me." And the lyrics in some cases are pretty strange. For example:

My friends say I'm acting queer as a bus ("All Shook Up")
Well, just you're o sad class ("Hound Dog")
The drummer was a star from his high school band ("Jailhouse Rock")

On the other hand they got the lyrics to the tongue-twisting "T-R-O-U-B-L-E" right, which was a pleasant surprise.